The first rain of her life

The drizzle felt powdery on her skin. She closed her eyes and raised her bare arms above her head, the palms facing the sky. A sudden gust of wind cut across her face. It’s touch cold in the wake of the rain. She felt a shiver running down her spine. She winced in ecstasy.

The scene in front of her eyes was majestic.

The sky was swell with the dark grey rain clouds, some of them descending down to kiss the top of the lush green hills that filled the view around her. The raindrops falling down were so light that they almost floated in the blowing wind. The air was filled with the fragrance of wet grass. It was intoxicating.

It was her first week in Pune and it didn’t take her long to fall in love with the city. The young city was surrounded by hills and lakes on all sides. The mountains had blossomed with the onset of monsoon-like a new bride-to-be on her marriage. Fresh and plump and lively.

She loved nature. And among everything that she loved about nature, she loved the mountains the most.

Her heart would beat a little faster when she was among the mountains. Among those breakouts made up of rocks and hills that grew from the earth, their peaks rising higher and higher, piercing into the sky. And these were breathtaking to look at, especially during the twilight — the time when sun light flirted with the mountains.

The rising and falling contours of hills provided perfect cover for the rising sun in the morning. Allowing Sun a grand entry from behind the veil that the sun wouldn’t have got otherwise. Like a new bride. And in the evenings, when the sun was spent from a full day of work, the mountains took it in its wake, like a mother taking her child’s tired body in her lap before he goes to his sleep.

It was majestic.

As a child prone to catch cold, her mother never allowed her to play in the rain. She hardly got out when it was raining without the company of an elder with a big umbrella over her head. Her mother was too protective and had her reasons for to be like that. But over time this had started suffocating her.

Only when she joined a college far away from home that she tasted freedom for the first time. And she ended up doing a lot of things for the first time in her life. Arranging her room, washing her clothes, managing finances. And among the many other things she did, she also, for the first time, felt the touch of the rain on her body.

One day spurred by the gather of the clouds in the sky, her friends in the hostel, all young girls touching the zenith of their teenage years, pulled her out of the bed and ran onto to the terrace. The clouds were rumbling now. Streaks of flashes in between. And then suddenly, without announcement, it started raining.

And it rained like it had never rained before. The raindrops fell on the earth with the force of the embrace of a young girl who had met her lover after a very long time. It was a downpour — as much as of water as it was of love. And all girls ran for the cover. All, except one.

She stood and continued standing as the rain washed her body down and raised her spirits higher and higher. Never had she felt so alive — never had she thought that she would in this downpour of nature. It was like as if she had found love. Found meaning. Found happiness in her existence.

A long time had passed since the first time she got drenched in that rain on that terrace of her hostel. Thirty years to be precise.

And even today, on second of the August, the day that marked the half-century of her life — a ripe age of fifty — she became a child and let her hair down and welcome the first rain of the season.